Many are called, but few chosen to teach

Armed with a master's in elementary education, Jennifer Waxberg launched a search for a teaching job in the western suburbs in 2004.

She didn't anticipate how much persistence -- and time -- it would take.

Waxberg worked for four years -- as a nanny, a private tutor, a teacher's assistant and a substitute teacher -- before starting a dream job this school year as a 1st-grade teacher at Mill Street Elementary School in Naperville's School District 203.

"It was very tough, and I was very lucky," said Waxberg, who persevered through applications, interviews and rejections.

Her story isn't unusual.

A glut of a new teachers in Illinois has created a deluge of applications and daunting competition for aspiring teachers, delaying and even ending dreams of teaching for frustrated job seekers.

Illinois is producing thousands more new teachers than public school districts are hiring, with oversupplies in all subject areas except bilingual education, according to a 2008 analysis by the Illinois Department of Education. The "overproduction" of teachers is highest in social science, according to the state.

And local districts are reporting an oversupply of applicants for elementary school teaching jobs, such as Waxberg's, as well as English language arts and physical-education teachers.

The situation may surprise education majors and their parents, but it is no secret to school personnel officials who say the hiring process has become so intense that hundreds to thousands of teacher applicants are weeded out before they even get to the school door for an interview.

In Naperville's District 203, a highly regarded DuPage district, there are more than 8,000 applications on file, and the district plans to hire about 85 teachers next year, with nearly 100 applicants for every job, said Craig von Behren, assistant superintendent for human resources.

Likewise, the well-regarded Oak Park and River Forest High School in west Cook County gets about 200 applications for teaching jobs in such subjects as English and history, said Jason Edgecombe, the assistant superintendent for human resources. Even if the school has no jobs posted, 50 to 100 applications will come in, Edgecombe said.

Even the Chicago Public Schools, where high poverty and other factors make teaching particularly challenging, has had a surge of applications -- 23,568 in 2008-09, double the applications five years ago.

Nancy Slavin, chief officer for teacher recruitment in the Chicago Public Schools, said top officials met last fall with officials at universities that train teachers.

"What we were trying to get at was: 'Hey, guys, we don't need social studies, English teachers and straight elementary teachers [with no specialties],'" she said. Chicago needs more teachers in select areas such as special education, Slavin said.

Deborah Curtis, dean of Illinois State University's College of Education, said Illinois has traditionally been known as a "big exporter" of teachers because it produces more new teachers than available teaching jobs within the state.

That said, her college is paying attention to the needs of districts and is "sculpting" the pool of students admitted to the College of Education, Curtis said. For example, the college has been limiting the number of students who want to pursue elementary education in favor of those interested in areas such as special education and bilingual education.

Still, the situation for aspiring teachers can be bleak.

"You're graduating from college with loans the equivalent of buying a new car, and then you find out you've gone to school and you're trained and there's an oversupply of people and you feel almost betrayed," von Behren said. "And you say, 'What do I do now?'"

In Lake County, 7th-grade social studies teacher Hal Schmeisser said that many of the University of Illinois classmates he has kept in touch with still haven't found jobs. One finally went to Alaska to teach, but others have moved into different careers by now. He counts himself as lucky because he landed a job in at Edgewood Middle School in Highland Park right out of college in 2007.

State officials emphasize that just because there's an oversupply of new teachers statewide doesn't mean some districts aren't struggling to find qualified applicants.

A number of factors can impact the number of applications received, said Jim Sweeney, who oversees the state Board of Education's annual educator supply and demand report.

"One district, A, can have an oversupply and B can have a dearth of applicants because of base pay and working conditions," Sweeney said.

For applicants, the odds depend in part on the subject area.

In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007, for example, 5,033 new teachers got certified to teach social science statewide, but only 373 were hired by public school districts for the 2007-08 school year, according to the state board. Than means 13.5 times more new social science teachers were certified than hired.

Adding to the challenge is that first-time teachers make up only a small portion of the teaching force -- 6 percent in 2007-08. Most of the teaching pool is made up of teachers retained from the prior academic year.

The state board compares the number of teachers certified for the first time to the number of first-time teachers hired for the coming school year. Newly certified teachers would include everything from Illinois college graduates to adults pursuing a second career in teaching to people like Waxberg, who earned her master's from Ohio State University, then moved to Naperville and got her Illinois teaching certificate.

The state doesn't track whether newly certified teachers get jobs out of state, in private schools or in private industry, focusing instead on public school districts in Illinois. The state looks for a 2-1 ratio -- at least two newly certified teachers for every opening -- to make sure public school districts have enough qualified applicants.

In the 2008 analysis, only one teaching area did not meet the ratio: bilingual education. Special education, which has experienced shortages in the past, met the 2-1 ratio, though state officials remain concerned about the supply as special education enrollment grows.

The state also tracks teaching jobs and other school positions, such as speech pathologists, that remain vacant though they were budgeted to be filled. That happens for a variety of reasons, including a lack of qualified applicants.

In that analysis, the Chicago Public Schools had the largest number of unfilled positions in 2007-08 with 570. Districts also report what they consider to be shortages of qualified teacher applicants despite the oversupply that exists statewide. In 2008 the shortages mostly were reported in special education areas but also included physics, chemistry, math and foreign language.

Overall, the competition is expected to remain tough for new teachers, in part because school enrollment in Illinois has begun to decline, and fewer students will likely mean fewer teachers are needed.

The state board's supply and demand report said that K-12 enrollment in Illinois went down in 2008 for the first time in 17 years and is expected to decline for the next four years by an average of 6,500 students a year.

- - -

Teacher surplus?

Far more teachers were certified in the 2006-07 school year than could be hired for the 2007-08 year in Illinois public schools.

Despite the glut of new teachers statewide, some school districts have a shortage of applicants in certain disciplines.

TEACHER SHORTAGE

In order of most need

1. Special Education, Speech and Language teacher

2. Special Education, Cross Categorical

3. Foreign Language, Spanish

4. Bilingual Education

5. Special Education, Learning and Behavior Specialist

6. Special Education, Emotionally Disturbed

7. Special Education, Specific Learning Disability

8. Mathematics

9. Science, Physics

10. Special Education, Bilingual

Note: The analysis compares the number of teachers getting their first teaching certificate in the 2007 budget year (July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007) to the number of new hires by Illinois public school districts for the 2007-08 school year.